Free Republic

CHICAGO - A WGN News creative services employee was accused of throwing an object at Border Patrol agents before being briefly detained on Friday. The incident occurred near Lincoln and Foster avenues in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on Chicago's North Side. Multiple videos of the incident were posted on social media. What we know: In the videos, the employee identifies herself as Debbie Brockman and mentions that she works for WGN. In a post on X, Gregory Bovino, commander-at-large of the U.S. Border Patrol, accused the WGN employee of "throwing an object at Border Patrol Agents conducting lawful duties." He...

Deborah Brockman, a veteran producer at WGN-TV, was forced to the ground as mask-wearing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers cuffed her in the Chicago suburb of Lincoln Square on Friday. The officers behind Brockman's arrest stopped at nothing to take her into custody - damaging a resistant driver's SUV after they refused to move out of the way. The CBP agents were driving in the area while conducting immigration enforcement operations when Brockman allegedly threw something at their vehicle, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). She was arrested for assaulting a federal agent, but was released from...

CHICAGO — This week, workers began tearing down the vacant Sears world headquarters in Hoffman Estates before the site is turned into a data center, a trend that has grown popular in the suburbs and now, a Chicago alderman wants to bring more of them into the city. That alderman is the 36th Ward’s Gilbert Villegas, who is advocating for a plan at City Council to convert vacant Chicago land into data centers. At a cost of millions annually, city government stores its data at centers locate outside of Chicago. Villegas, chairman of the Council Technology Committee, has written an...

The man who entertained generations of Chicago children with Chelveston the Duck, Cuddley Duddley and morning turtle races is dead. Ray Rayner, who hosted the morning kid show “Ray Rayner and Friends” on WGN for nearly 20 years, and also played clown Oliver O’Oliver on the Bozo Show, died this morning of pneumonia in a hospital in Fort Myers, Fla., where he had been living in retirement, according to his daughter, Christina Miller. He was 84. Known at one time as the busiest man in Chicago television, during one period in the 1960s, Mr. Rayner performed in three live television...